Jesse Parent

Doors

My daughter tells me she wants to start dating
and I shrug.
She tells me the name of her girlfriend
and I shrug again.
She tells me I have to be careful
because her girlfriend’s parents don’t know that she’s gay.
And I pause.

She tells me her girlfriend’s parents are religious
and I want to tell her “so am I” and “that shouldn’t matter”
But I can’t deny that while religion doesn’t always build the closet door
it does tend to supply the lumber.
To plane it straight.
After all, Jesus was a carpenter’s son,
knows the many uses of wood,
how to hang plumb.

And here I reach the point of parental dilemma
where I need to be honest with this girlfriend’s parents
and where she just needs to survive.
My daughter praying to crossed timber
on an atheist’s rosary that the door 
will open and her girlfriend will be 
where she last saw her,
alive and well hidden under a heap of clothes
that her parents bought for her. 

I live a thousand lifetimes in this decade of Hail Marys 
where my daughter does not go to prom
because her girlfriend has to go with a boy
where my daughter is called an aunt or special friend
where she is pulled inside the door of someone else’s closet.
Applying another coat of varnish and lacquer 
until she blurs a little more every day. 

So when I meet this girlfriend’s parents,
I smile like a stack of toothpicks,
shake their hands and feel for splinters and callouses.
I choose their daughter’s survival over the truth.
But I say a silent prayer, a vow,
to put every door in my own home into a wood chipper
until my daughter falls in love with the smell of sawdust.

Previously published in Suspect Press Issue #15 (Fall 2017)

Coulrophobia

Ta da!

Wasn’t that great kids?
Did you enjoy the show?
The part where so many of us
exploded out of the car door
like toothpaste
after your dad stomps it
with the heel of his shoe?

Why all the shocked faces?
You aren't afraid of clowns, are you?
A fear of clowns.
As if such a thing could exist!
Who could be afraid of a clown?
You? YOU!?

Oh, come on now,
don't cry.
I'll make you a balloon animal!
A horse? Maybe a dog?
Mine never lose their shape.
The trick is to twist their necks
until just before they pop!

Or maybe a magic trick?
I know a few.
Mostly ones involving scarves
and making things disappear!

Look at my baggy clothes!
They’re so much bigger than they need to be.
Why are they so big?
It’s hilarious.
I mean, I could be hiding anything under here.
Juggling balls! Juggling clubs!
Machetes.
Anything!

Did you see my face!
Look at the red paint on my smile.
Doesn’t it remind you of apples?
Racing cars?
Sliced fingertips?
My eyes are rounded perfectly
in a blue you’d have to choke someone to see.
My gloves! They’re so funny!
But they’re not the real me.
No one is ever going to match a fingerprint to these!

I’m a real person under all this silliness.
Why, I could be anyone you’ve ever met
and you’d never even know.

Maybe after we're done
I'll slink back into clown alley,
clean off all this make-up,
remove my fluffy wig,
slip into clothes that fit like skin,
and sit right behind you.

Wouldn't that be fun?

See?
I’m not so strange.
My nose,
it comes right off.

Maybe 
yours 
does, 
too.

Ta da…

Previously published in The Noise That Is Not You (Sargent Press, 2012)

White Jesus

Hey, everybody!
It’s-a me - White Jesus!
I’ve come to break baguettes
and share cab sav with some
of my favorite sinners! 
You guys!

I know what you’re thinking,
“Hey, White Jesus, what’s with that outrageous accent?”
Well, just like the rest of White Jesus, 
it’s vaguely European and depends on your frame of reference.
After all, God may have created us all in His image
but White Jesus gets created in the image 
of those who are trying to make a sale!

I mean, who doesn’t have a nice painting
of White Jesus in their living room?
Or a little statue 
of yours truly with some lambs,
or maybe me as a baby in a manger
with White Mary and White Joseph
and White Angels and White Shepherds
and some vaguely non-white Wise Men?
They had to travel a long way 
into the lands of Caucasia to bring me 
these smelly gifts.

White Jesus just makes a better present
when he looks like the rest of the family.
Didn’t your Grandmother trace your genealogy 
all the way back to the House of David?
Just like White Jesus, lineage is important!
Watch as they nail me to your family tree
and you wash me white, root and stem.
Slake my thirst with a sponge
soaked in vinegar wine
to sour my history.
Trade in my sandals for Birkenstocks,
my coiled hair for long auburn locks,
my rough linen for white sheets,
I mean, after all,
who doesn’t love wearing white sheets?

Just like your family tree
I am a self portrait
of poor white Renaissance artists 
who could only afford a mirror for a model.
How wonderful to get a whole religion to worship your image.
Carve all my sculptures from marble or alabaster,
Make me as white as Sushi Burrito or 
Great Harvest flatbread.

Tell anyone who doesn’t look like White Jesus 
that no matter how Christ-like they live their lives 
they will never look like salvation.
Play up the blackness of their souls,
how much can that weigh a person down?
Gesture to the stained glass 
and comment how beautiful the light looks coming 
through my creamy complexion.
I am the Exodus from Egypt.
This is what Palestine probably looks like, right?
No refugee ever looked like me.
Keep citing the facts of scripture and the evidence of illustrations.

Now, look at-a me.
White Jesus.
Doesn’t my accent seem so much less outrageous  
in comparison to the rest of me?

Replay 

If life had a replay button
I would pick certain moments and live in them, forever.

I probably would have worn out the replay button losing my virginity, 
losing my virginity, 
losing my virginity,
because at that age, it blew my mind that it was finally happening.
Or, I would pop back to my first tattoo
just to recapture that moment when I thought it was going to hurt so much.
Watch the surprise on my face as I settled in like an addict,
think, “Wow… I sure had a lot of hair, back then…”

When I need motivation to workout, something to really fire me up,
I’d go back to when I got jumped outside that restaurant in Worcester,
Watch my eye explode crimson, my forehead a knuckle’s drum.
Feel helpless, again.
Get angry, again.
Then I’d hit the weights
say never again 
never again
I’d never be that drunk again.
But at that point in my life,
the replay button seemed to be working a little too well.
Drunk and getting in fights
Drunk and getting in fights
Each replay a new scar
Each shot as familiar as the start of the last scene

But as hard as mistakes are to rewatch
It’s the happy times I’d be scared of.
Dangerously happy, dripping joy like morphine,
I would fiend for them,
scratch my flesh raw and scabbed,
dependent, their withdrawals a fatal shake.
I would never let the television show of my life finish,
just skip past the hum drum commercials of simple living
and binge watch the highlights.

Will you marry me? Yes.
I do.
It’s a boy and he’s beautiful! 
It’s a girl and she’s beautiful! 
It’s another boy and he’s beautiful! 
I love you, daddy! 
Look! No training wheels!
My youngest son asking me to teach him about Pokemon and telling him, yes!
My daughter asking me to teach her to fight and telling her, yes!
My oldest son asking me to explain sex and telling him… uh….
Back to when my children smiled in the shadows of gum lines and missing teeth
I would press down on that replay button
as if my weight could halt the growth of their oaks,
trap them in a scene of unfortunate haircuts
and baby fat unmelted by the wick of adolescence.
I would want to relive every beautiful moment again 
and again 
and again.
I’m not strong enough to resist these joys,
To think it will ever be better than this.
to think I am worthy of another memory like it.
To think that I am anything more than a drunk, 
than my scars, 
than my worst moments.
How could God let me be this happy, again?

I would want to relive every beautiful moment again 
and again 
and again.
Press down on that replay button
when my children smiled
skip past the hum drum commercials of simple living,
like morphine
Each shot as familiar as the start of the last scene
something to really fire me up,
watch the surprise on my face as I settled in like an addict
when I thought it was going to hurt so much.
that it was finally happening.

If life had a replay button
I would pick certain moments and live in them, forever.
Forever.
Forever.

God, let me be this happy, again.